Santa Barbara. Sally is the
name we gave Betty’s white, 1998 Mustang convertible, as in the song “Mustang
Sally.”

Sally really got a workout,
adding 4,104 miles to her odometer and putting her over the 20,000 mark. Much of
that was through scorching, desert heat as high as 112 degrees at speeds of
about 80 mph with air conditioner wide open. She also carried us through heavy
smoke from forest fires that blotted out the sun and reduced visibility to a few
hundred yards for 100 or more miles, through nasty smog and bumper-to-bumper
traffic in L.A. and past the spectacular views of the California coastline along
Highway 1.

We had planned on taking a
somewhat different route through Texas and the desert for this big trip so we
could see some different sights. (An account of our 1999 driving trip, with
photos, is posted at lewis_nolan/WEST1.HTML).
Besides, we wanted to skirt a terrible traffic choke point on Interstate 40 in
Eastern Oklahoma, where an errant barge had dropped a bridge over the Arkansas
River a few weeks before. About a dozen people had lost their lives in the
accident when the towboat’s captain blacked out one night. His tow slammed into
a bridge support pier, knocking a span and several vehicles into the dark water.
Expectations are that it will be months before the bridge can be rebuilt. In the
meantime a goodly percentage of the nation’s truck traffic has been re-routed on
rural roads through the area and officials have asked for travelers to use
different routes if possible.

The main purpose of this year’s
trip was to visit our son, Casey, 27, who has been living in Santa Barbara for
two years. He is a project engineer for Clark Construction, which is building a
huge rocket launch facility at nearby Vandenberg AFB. We had offered to help him
prepare for his impending relocation to Boston, where he will enter Harvard’s
MBA program this fall. But as it turned out, he had already taken the necessary
steps to minimize the aggravation of moving across the country. So in the
absence of any packing/lifting or related chores, we were free to enjoy Casey’s
company when he wasn’t at work. Plus, we had the use of a spare bedroom in his
rented condo on a hillside overlooking Santa Barbara. It made a great base for
our sightseeing excursions.

We made the decision to drive
following our trip to Ireland in March. We had flown from Memphis to Shannon,
Ireland, for a delightful revisit to the Dingle Peninsula during Betty’s
weeklong Easter break from teaching high school.But we had been much annoyed by the
redundant and ridiculously overzealous security procedures in Boston’s Logan
Airport. So rather than use our frequent flier mileage or try to catch a deal on
a flight to L.A., we decided to drive and thereby forego all the
security/delay/lost baggage hassles that seem to accompany most of our air
travel vacations.

Evidently, there are a lot of
Americans making similar decisions. The airline and lodging industries continue
to reel because so many people who don’t have to fly are deciding to drive or
simply not go. The hassle just isn’t worth it. Even before the terrorist murders
of about 4,000 innocent people Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were becoming
increasingly disgusted by the poor service of the airlines – tight seats, no
food, delays, missed connections and high prices.

I feel sorry for the displaced
working people in the travel/tourism industry, who shoulder the burden and take
the guff from unhappy customers while their corporate managments enrich
themselves. But I also feel liberated by not having to fret about the discomfort
and inconvenience of air travel today. Thank you, Sally.

I’ve been on a lot of driving
trips from California to the Mid-South and back, starting with the great
overland vacations with my travel-loving father when I was a boy living in
Sacramento, Calif. Later came the cross-country commuting in a 1958 MGA and then
a 1965 Mustang. Those long drives before the interstate highway system was
complete came when I was a student at Ole Miss, ECJC and Mississippi State. I
drove back and forth from campus to Sacramento during Christmas and summer
vacations, with each trip taking about 40 hours of drive time. The drives halted
in 1967, when I graduated from Mississippi State.

After a hiatus of 14 years, we
pulled a pop-up to San Diego, Sacramento, Mt. Lassen and other points West on an
extended camping vacation in the summer of 1981. The AC on our Ford Fairmont
wagon wasn’t strong enough to handle the load over the hot, desert mountains.
But we were younger then and managed OK in the heat, with the help of lots of
ice water and an electric fan to move the hot air around the camper at
night.

We’re softer now and demand more
comfort. With my AARP and other discounts, we planned on staying in decent
motels like the Comfort Inn and Holiday Inn Express chains, which provide free
breakfast and other amenities at a modest price. We knew we’d have access to a
laundry at Casey’s condo development so we packed lightly. I took a half-bag of
golf clubs. We found room for a case of hard-to-find TAB soft drinks, plus some
road snacks. But we still saved some trunk space for the inevitable souvenirs
and other purchases we knew we would acquire over the next three weeks.

We were up by 5:30 a.m. but it
still took two hours to eat, shower, make trip sandwiches (leftover tuna steaks
and grilled chicken breasts) and load Sally. We already missed Dickens, our
retired racing greyhound we had dropped off at “Kennel Camp” at the West Memphis
dog track the previous afternoon. We know he will enjoy being with his canine
buddies, be well treated and probably overfed.

We pulled out of Memphis on a
beautiful, sunny Tuesday, with high temperatures expected to be about 90
degrees. We were driving on one of the longest-running construction projects in
the United States, Interstate 40. We headed west to Little Rock and the
connection with Interstate 30, westbound to Dallas. I-40 from the
Memphis-Arkansas Bridge over the Mississippi River through West Memphis takes a
terrible pounding from the thousands of heavy trucks that daily make this
crossing over the Mississippi River. It is perhaps the busiest east-west route
in the U.S. The fear of terrorist attacks taking out one or more of the four
highway bridges spanning the river at Memphis has prompted much discussion about
the need for a new, reinforced bridge.

The I-40 roadway from the river to the
junction with northbound I-55 has been under constant repair and rebuilding for
more than 20 years. There have been frequent bad wrecks on this stretch of road
the last few weeks, claiming a dozen or more lives. The Arkansas Highway Patrol
seems to be at a loss at how to slow down the sleep-starved truckers, who
sometimes boom down the interstate with utter abandon and recklessness.

The drive from Memphis to Little
Rock is a familiar one. We’ve been going through or around Little Rock on the
way to Hot Springs to “take the waters” for more than a quarter of a century. I
visited the gigantic Maybelline plant in North Little Rock on business several
times a year during the mid and late 1980s. The cosmetic company was then a
subsidiary of my employer, Schering-Plough. It was sold to an investment-banking
group in 1990, taken public and bought by a French company, L’Oreal, nearly a
decade later. The plant is still a landmark on the approach to Little Rock and
nearby shortcut around the Arkansas capital to westbound I-30.

Passing by the Maybelline factory
always rekindles in me some bittersweet memories of being part of a great
company. Regrettably, as the world turned so did Schering-Plough and Maybelline.
Until the early 1990s, Memphis had been global headquarters for Schering-Plough
Consumer Operations, which included Maybelline among its stable of cosmetic
companies. Corporate decisions were made in subsequent years that greatly
diminished the size of both Schering-Plough and Maybelline operations in
Memphis. Combined employment was gradually cut from about 2,500 in 1984 to 500
in 2002 as various parts of the once thriving business were relocated, sold or
shut down. It was the story of corporate America in the 1990s, a sadly familiar
story in many communities and families.

Three years ago, I-40 from
Memphis to Little Rock was a mess much of the way due to badly needed repairs
and repaving. It still is, despite completion of several stretches of roadway.
It remains a puzzle and a disgrace how such a critical transportation artery got
into such terrible condition. Fortunately, Interstate 30 just east of Little
Rock is farther along on the re-building process. Still, traffic was slowed to
50 mph by the reduction of many miles of road to one lane in each direction.
Consequently, the drive to Dallas was increased by about one hour, to seven.

The only thing pleasant about the
drive – other than the fun anticipation of arriving at our destination and
making several interesting stops along the way – was a steady view of
wildflowers and thriving plants and trees on both sides of the highway. This has
been a rainy spring and summer and the scenery are so green that it suggests
Ireland. Memphis has gotten about one inch of rain more than normal. Combined
with somewhat cooler temperatures than usual, the rain has come every few days
so the grasses and shrubs are spring-luscious instead of their normal brown of
heat-baked summer.

Our route - dropping down to
Dallas on I-30 rather than driving straight through Oklahoma and the Texas
panhandle on I-40 - was chosen for a couple of reasons. The aforementioned one
had to do with the bridge out in Eastern Oklahoma. Just as important was Betty’s
wish to visit one of her friends and former Sunday school classmates, who had
moved from Memphis to a very nice nursing home just north of Dallas. It

is Gardens of Richardson in
the upscale suburban community of Richardson. Mary White had been a longtime
member of Evergreen Presbyterian Church’s Basic Bible Class, which Betty has
served as teacher for several years. Mary’s daughter, Mary Florence McReynolds,
and her family live in Richardson. She gave us some directions on how to skirt
the worst of a monumental traffic jam around a construction project at I-635 and
a major Dallas road, U.S. 75.

We arrived about 3:30 p.m. and
found our way to a Sleep Inn ($44 a night, courtesy of the AARP rate) in a
corporate office area of Richardson. Due to our early arrival, Betty called Mary
Florence and advanced her visit to Mary White to that afternoon from tomorrow
morning. We soon repaired to the Gardens of Richardson and were impressed with
the spaciousness of the retirement/nursing home development, the quality of the
furnishings and the congeniality of the staff.

Betty had a nice visit while I
stayed downstairs in a plush chair in the lobby to read more of Joe Stein’s
excellent book about the presidency of Bill Clinton, “The Natural.” Betty took
some photos of Mary, who looked very well. Mary seemed to be quite pleased to
see Betty, who had brought her some photos she’d taken of Mary’s friends back at
Evergreen. Afterward, Betty and I picked up some take-out salads and
French-fries to go with our sandwiches carried from home. We ate in the motel
room and retired early.

June 19, 2002, Wednesday. In Dallas

Knowing that the morning rush
traffic in and around Dallas was horrendous, we slept in and took our time over
a light, complimentary breakfast of cereal and Danish. We had decided to visit
the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, which doesn’t open
until 10 a.m. during the week. So we dawdled around as a torrent of commuters
crawled by on the eight-lane road that runs by the Sleep Inn, headed for their
jobs in Big D. Richardson is an affluent place and nearly all the cars and SUVs
we saw were late model and expensive. The directions given us the previous day
by a nursing home employee were excellent and we arrived at the Arboretum after
an easy drive of 20-to-30 minutes.

A major building program is
underway at already beautiful and splendid Arboretum and Gardens, which
encompass 102 acres that once held the estates of two oil-rich, Dallas families.
We were told the Arboretum employs 22 professional gardeners and is visited by
more than 350,000 persons annually. The $8 adult admission was waived because of
our membership in the Memphis Botanic Gardens, a reciprocal arrangement that
also got us free admission into the Flagstaff Arboretum and Santa Barbara
Botanical Garden later in the trip.

The Dallas gardens are larger
than those in Memphis are and much more manicured, probably the result of
private rather than municipal ownership. The gardens overlook a lake several

miles long and perhaps
shoreline mansions dot a mile across that. The gardens are as nice as any we’ve
seen. There are numerous plantings, which have obviously been painstakingly
planned and tended. Various special planting areas were given in honor or by
some familiar names that signify wealth, including Neiman Marcus, Trammel Crow
and Greer Garson.

Our favorites were a spectacular
row of demonstration/test beds with plantings rotated by season. Some are in
full sun, some in partial sun and some in heavy shade. Some hibiscus produced
huge, red blooms the size of plates. Other bright-colored flowers included
roses, petunias and impatiens. There was also some nice plantings of
not-so-familiar ground covers that were thriving in the deep shade of live oak
trees.

Extra-lush gardens and flowering
shrubs were in full bloom around the 21,000-square-foot, estate home of the
founder, the late Everett DeGolyer. The petroleum geologist made a fortune and
willed the estate and his library of 15,000 books to Southern Methodist
University after the death of his wife (in 1972). SMU later sold it to the city
of Dallas. The city in turn ceded operation to the Arboretum’s private
foundation and extensive volunteer organization in 1982. The plantings were
gorgeous and orderly, as only those beds tended by loving hands can be.

Unfortunately, the constraints of
time and our desire to get out of Dallas before the afternoon traffic thickens
at 2 p.m. meant that we didn’t have nearly enough time to see more than a sample
of the gardens. Most of what we saw was from our private, two-tour tour on a
tram driven by a retiree-volunteer, a talkative and entertaining chap with
considerable knowledge about the Gardens and botany in general. Another negative
was that another volunteer – an elderly “greeter” who evidently didn’t know his
left from his right – gave us directions to I-30 that that sent us in the
opposite direction. We drove east for 30 minutes and cleared the city limits
before discovering the reality of wrong-way Corrigan’s guidance. So we lost
another 30 minutes retracing our route before we got to and through downtown and
onto I-30 headed west.

Dallas traffic is congested even
early in the afternoon. Many new bridges, ramps and extra lanes have been
completed in recent years. More are under construction now. But the growth of
the city and its environs far outpaces highway construction. So traffic creeps
through the routes crisscrossing the city like in Atlanta and L.A. But the city
at least provides useful information to drivers with a network of electric signs
alongside the roads. Dallas now has so many telephones that the area has run out
of seven-digit numbers; local numbers now must be preceded with one of two local
area codes.

I would have liked to admire the
shining skyscrapers that decorate Big D and give it such a distinctive skyline.
But the heavy traffic of the pre-rush period moved along at such speed and
density of pack interval that it required two-hands on the wheel and full
concentration. Amazingly, nature seemed to be at work preparing to prune the
gene pool when a couple of young men driving high-powered cars weaved through
the lanes at high speed. One nearly crashed when trying to slip into a tiny
space between two cars at 90 mph.

Traffic started thinning out once
we got 10-to-20 miles west of Fort Worth on I-30, which turns into I-20. We had
driven this stretch of road three years ago, in the opposite direction. It was
boring then and boring now. We passed through Sweetwater (pop. 11,000 and seat
of Nolan County), which proclaims itself on billboards as home of the largest
annual roundup of live rattlesnakes in the world. Near Sweetwater and atop a
ridge to the South off I-20 were perhaps 100 gigantic wind turbines slowing
spinning in the hot wind. We had not noticed the electricity-generating devices
when we passed through here three years ago. Their presence – while quite modest
when compared to the several thousand turbines outside Palm Springs, Calif. -
suggests an expensive investment in harnessing the alternative power of the
pervasive West Texas wind.

We got off I-20 west of Abilene
to drive north on U.S. 84 to Lubbock, then up I-27 to Amarillo.Highway 84, like other lightly traveled
roads we’ve driven on in Texas, is in excellent condition. This stretch was
four-lane all the way and we mainly had it to ourselves. Such roads are a
testament to the political power of the Lone Star State when it comes to
generating and capturing federal highway funds to connect distant ranching
communities. The genius of the state’s politicians in taking care of the driving
needs of their constituents stands in stark contrast to the shoddy highways
through Arkansas. Even with their favorite son in the White House, Arkansas
voters have had to put up with some of the worst roads in the U.S. for several
years. Bill Clinton, whose home state birthplace of Hope is announced on road
signs, and the small congressional delegation didn’t seem to deliver much for
the home folks even though the Interstate highways through Arkansas provide
important transportation corridors for the nation’s goods.

Breaking up the monotony of the
generally flattish land punctuated only by various concentrations of Mesquite
and Palo Verde trees were the occasional, oil well pumpers that still are at
work. They tirelessly suck up the remaining oil released by wells drilled years
ago. Many of the nodding pumper heads – which resemble giant black grasshoppers
– are silent and rusting away. Most of the Texas oil patch has been pumped
nearly dry in this part of the state. But the skyrocketing price of petroleum
products has again made it economical to extract lower quantities of oil that
would stay in the ground if prices were cheap.

The smell of petroleum is
pervasive in the air around Abilene (pop. 115,000) and the wide-open spaces to
the north. We saw a few herds of beef cattle. But the only longhorns we noticed
were several hundred miles to the east, near the Arkansas border. A single
strand of electrified fence wire keeps the docile cattle in their place on most
of the ranch land we saw around Abilene, long the source of beef and rodeo
cowboys.

Lubbock (pop. 200,000) is mainly
an agriculture-based town. It is surrounded by desolate farmland that is rich
enough when irrigated to grow crops of cotton, wheat and other grains. Giant
elevators stand like huge sentries and can be seen for miles across the flat
countryside. We noticed virtually no flowers in front of the homes and ranch
houses that could be seen from the highway, possibly because of the hot wind.
Most homes are at least partially protected from the wind by plantings of trees,
which also provide shade.

This section of West Texas is in
the western-most part of the Central Time Zone so it stays light much later than
it does in Memphis. There was still a lot of light at 9 p.m., reminding me of
the British Isles.

We arrived in Amarillo (pop.
173,000) about 8 p.m. and checked into a Comfort Inn, where I negotiated a
discounted rate of $44. A nice desk clerk matched the price charged the previous
night at a sister property outside Dallas even though a Jehovah’s

Witnesses convention had
filled most of the less expensive motels in the area. We ate at a nearby
Denny’s, where Betty had fried shrimp and I went for a shrimp-sirloin combo that
was better than expected.

June 20, 2002, Thursday – Amarillo to
Sedona, Arizona

The Comfort Inn’s free breakfast
included fresh-cooked scrambled eggs and hot biscuits, the first such I’ve seen
at the usual cold buffets. We were on the road at 8:30 a.m., an early start for
us. Ten and one-half hours later, we finally arrived at Sedona, Ariz., after a
long, tiring and creepy drive.

Just west of Amarillo, on
Interstate 40, is one of the most recognized works of folk art in the United
States, if not the Western Word. Called Cadillac
Ranch, it is an arrangement of partly buried Cadillac cars. The about 10
Cadillacs are big models with the distinctive tail fins of the 1960s. They are
in a row and buried nose-down, with a little over half the bodies jutting out of
the ground at a 45-degree angle. The formation of the Cadillacs nose down in the
flat land suggests a flock of pelicans diving into a calm sea after fish. To my
later regret, in the interest of making time we didn’t stop to take close
pictures and settled for a postcard.

The drive across the remaining
half of the Texas panhandle was boring. It was just endless miles of flat
farmland and pasture without features or other distinction.

Crossing into New Mexico, we
stopped at an ersatz adobe building that houses the state’s Welcome Center on
I-40. Three years ago, several, very large Native American women who were
friendly and who seemed to enjoy joking around with visitors staffed the place.
Their Anglo replacements of 2002 were younger and trimmer. They seemed to be
harried and intent on pushing ad-laden vacation guides on everyone who entered
the building. Maybe they are understaffed and have quotas to fill. One thing is
for sure; whoever has charge of tourism in New Mexico isn’t paying much
attention to the impression the state’s Welcome Centers and rest areas give
tourists. Restrooms are deplorable.

It’s a shame because New Mexico
offers some very fine motoring routes for tourists. It has 24 scenic byways,
including six with national designations. They include the Turquoise Trail
(route followed by gold and mine explorers); El Camino Real (the old Spanish
royal road); Billy the Kid Byway (wilderness where the outlaw hid out), the
Santa Fe Trail (the famous route west of the pioneers in covered wagons) and
Historic Route 66 (the vaunted “Mother Road” of America in the 1930s).

I’m very much aware of the
extreme stress many state budgets are facing because of the falloff in tax
receipts due to the recessionary economy and plunge in capital gains from the
stock market. Tennessee has been struggling for more than a year with projected
imbalances measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a monumental revenue
shortfall that was only temporarily averted with increases in sales taxes and
various fees. I’m mindful that cheap politicians always suggest making high
profile but stupid cuts in services that will dismay the public – like closing
parks. Thus, the public distaste for ever-higher taxes is often beaten down so
yet another tax increase is grudgingly accepted. The same politicians never put
on the table cuts in their own pay, perks and bloated staffs. It’s disgusting
that Members of Congress have managed to get automatic raises in their already
high pay – now $160,000 a year without even having to vote on it.

We’ve been reading about the huge
forest fires in Colorado and other parched areas of the
West that have consumed tens of thousand acres of trees on public lands and
forced the evacuation of several communities. New Mexico’s Philmont Scout Ranch,
where our son participated in a weeklong wilderness hike through the high
country more than a decade ago, has been closed due to out-of-control fires.
Extreme drought conditions have prevailed for several years in much of the West.
We saw many burned patches of yucca plants along the road through New Mexico and
later Arizona and California. Some roads had been temporarily closed because of
wildfires leaping over the highway.

Any thoughts we might have
harbored to savor the sights of New Mexico were scrubbed because of the fire
danger. We zipped by Tucumcari, where we had stopped for night three years ago,
and around Albuquerque, home to an extensive collection of Georgia O’Keefe’s
artwork. Nearly 40 years ago I used to drive through the length both towns on
the old Route 66. The road is still remembered and promoted by a cottage
industry of attractions that cater to the pilgrims who retrace its faded glory.
There is a website that celebrates the road’s route through New Mexico at
www.rt66nm.org. Tucumcari is a drag. But we’d like to spend some time in
Albuquerque some day because it supposedly has a lot to offer tourists.

Just west of Gallup, N.M., we
noticed a lot of haze in the atmosphere. Visibility in the dry, desert air
usually is 10 or more miles, making for some fantastic views of distant
mountains, buttes and striated rock formations. We first assumed the haze was
the result of smoke from the Colorado fires drifting south.

We later learned that the smoke
was coming from runaway fires in northeast Arizona. Winds of 30 mph and more
drove the fires out of control and pushed the smoke north to I-40 and beyond.
The visibility narrowed from miles to perhaps 200-to-300 yards. The yellow-brown
smoke blotted out the sun. Most cars and trucks were lead-footing it through the
smoke with headlights on. We were traveling at 80 mph and over and didn’t know
whether to turn around or drive on. The smell of smoke was pervasive, getting
into our clothes and hair. Our throats became dry and acrid-tasting, as though
we’d been sitting downwind of a campfire. It was creepy and a little scary.

We drove through increasingly
heavy smoke for about an hour, finally breaking through into clean air near
Winslow, Ariz.We could see a
mountainous tower of black smoke rising to the southeast, looking something like
the enormous cloud of radioactive smoke that rose over Hiroshima at the close of
World War II. The strong winds pushed the evil-looking smoke to the north and
east.

We later learned that 7,000
people had been evacuated from their homes in Northern Arizona. Three towns had
been emptied as firemen and volunteers fought the fire officials called “the
Monster.” It was the biggest fire in the history of Arizona; the area was
declared a disaster. There were many accounts of bravery and sacrifice as fire
departments from through the Southwest dispatched equipment and trained
firefighters to help the beleaguered Arizona communities threatened by the
raging fire that could not be contained.

Hours later, we were detoured
around the picturesque U.S. Highway 89 that connects Flagstaff to Sedona.
Forestry personnel had closed hiking trails and greatly limited vehicular
traffic on the well-traveled road through beautiful Oak Creek Canyon because of
extreme fire risk. Consequently, our driving distance to Sedona from Flagstaff
was roughly doubled since we couldn’t take the direct, scenic route. We had to
take Interstate 19 south of I-40, as if going to Phoenix, and then loop back
north to Sedona on an alternate route to the South. It took a long time after a
very long day of tiring driving, 10 ½ hours to be exact. But at least Betty
spotted four elk grazing in a meadow 100 or so yards from the highway. We read
that the fire and lack of water had driven many deer and elk into inhabited
areas.

A real jerk at the Comfort Inn in
Sedona demanded an even higher rate than the one quoted me earlier in the day
when I called from Amarillo. The morning desk clerk assured me I could get an
even better rate as a walk-in after 7 p.m. Maybe in theory. But not with the
desk clerk of Middle Eastern descent who was on duty this evening. The Arab’s
take-it-or-leave-it attitude added insult to injury.

So, we took our business next
door and negotiated a good rate at the nicer Quality Inn, whose desk manager was
friendly and much more accommodating. When it turned out that our room’s air
conditioner wasn’t working properly, we were upgraded at no charge to a very
large, executive suite, complete with a porch with a view, a sitting area and a
whirlpool bath. All this was for a rate of $59 a night, $20 below what the Arab
demanded for a regular room on the second floor. It was clear that the Quality’s
night manager, a woman named Sabrina who said she has been in the lodging
business for six years, and desk clerk, a new employee named Russ, know how to
make customers feel welcome. I wasn’t surprised the next morning when it looked
like every parking space was filled, a sign of a sellout despite the fire and
the slow summer season.

On the staff recommendation, we
ate at the independently owned and operated restaurant on the inn’s leased,
second floor. We sat on a deck and enjoyed a magnificent view of the red rock
formations that make Sedona so distinctive. My grilled salmon and Betty’s beef
enchilada were very good. The beauty of the colors and shadows formed on the
nearby rocks by the setting sun were almost breathtaking.